Nearly a month after fighting erupted in the capital, Juba, pushing nearly 200,000 people from their homes, the political power struggle between loyalists of President Salva Kiir and his ex-deputy Riek Machar rests on a knife’s edge, threatening to spiral into a deadly ethnic conflict. The world welcomed South Sudan’s birth in July 2011, but if thousands of peacekeepers and pressure from superpowers can’t influence a truce at the negotiating table in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, it may end up lamenting its tragic collapse.
– Andrew Katz
Crisis in South Sudan: The World’s Youngest Nation Struggles to Survive
Phil Moore / AFP / Getty Images
South Sudanese men lay down between makeshift shelters in a spontaneous camp for internally displaced persons at the United Nations Mission to South Sudan base in Juba, South Sudan, on Jan. 9, 2014.
